


Of Light and Wedding Rings

by Hageny



Category: Bedannibal - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-05
Updated: 2016-07-05
Packaged: 2018-07-21 15:48:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7393636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hageny/pseuds/Hageny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hannibal and Bedelia discuss their relationship, and their marriage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Light and Wedding Rings

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to everyone who has left kudos and comments on my other works. I always appreciate receiving feedback, and will try to reply to everyone. Thank you again.

“Why pose as husband and wife, Hannibal?”  
Hannibal’s face freezes, but he says nothing.  
“I was your psychiatrist in Baltimore; I could be your psychiatrist in Florence, too. Or in France.” Bedelia pauses. “Or anywhere we’ve been.”  
A smile tugs the corners of his lips. “And travel we have, haven’t we, Bedelia?”  
He is standing behind her, watching her as she tugs gently at the pins in her hair, pulling them out slowly, hearing metal colliding with the silver tin that sits atop her vanity. The satisfying ‘clink, clink’ as they touch the bottom.  
“We haven’t exactly had much choice” she replies quietly. She slowly turns, hair tumbling gently now around her shoulders, and holds her hairbrush out toward him. Mason Pearson. Only ever the finest.  
He comes forward slowly, and takes the hairbrush from her hand, as she turns back to the mirror. He begins to comb gently through her curls, an act which seems as natural to him as bathing her; he sees contradictions colliding in their home. Physical nakedness and intimacy. Veiled emotions and conversations flooded with metaphor and allusion.  
“Why, Hannibal?”  
“Why ask now?”  
“Why not now?”  
He meets her eyes in the mirror. “Would you rather be something else to me, Bedelia?”  
She flashes him a knowing look. “I’m sure eventually I will be.”  
Hannibal continues to stare at her for a few moments before breaking eye contact and continuing to brush her hair, silken tresses slipping through his fingers, reminding him of the feel of her skin, the sound of her voice. All liquid in a cold vessel.  
“You can be whatever you want to be” he says simply. “You’ve participated equally in the making of our fairytale, and even before then you were what you wanted to be to me.”  
“Your psychiatrist” she says quietly.  
“Not my friend” he replies, meeting her eyes again briefly.   
Bedelia sees something that beguiles her senses, and forces her to take note. A mental image, of her and Hannibal’s hands cupped together, and the world dangling hopelessly in between. It is at once seductive and frightening, two lonely souls at the center of the world, pulling listlessly at strings.   
“And now your wife” she says, eyes staring out of their bedroom window.   
Hannibal places the brush on her vanity and touches her shoulders.   
“Of all the world’s at which we have been center, this is surely the most clearly defined” he says.  
She turns back to him and narrows her eyes, sees herself letting him lead the conversation.   
He continues. “You and I were students first, at university, years ago. Then colleagues. Then patient and psychiatrist. Now husband and wife. It is the first moment in time in which we have centered the universe between us, and not held it aimlessly for ourselves.”   
Bedelia looks at him sadly. “Anyone could have been your psychiatrist, Hannibal.”  
“Anyone was not. You were.”  
“Why did you want me here, Hannibal?”  
“Why are you here, Bedelia?”  
She looks at him, wondering whether or not to speak. To say not enough or to say too much.  
Hannibal shifts slightly, and looks sadly out into the night, into Florence in all its heavy grandeur, and the lights dancing down below.  
“Is lucid greed still a motivator?” he asks quietly.   
She pauses before she speaks. “I am helping you to understand your relationship to Will Graham.”  
“And leaving me to merely navigate my relationship to you.”  
“I don’t know how you see me Hannibal.”  
“I don’t see you in any way.”  
Hannibal finally locks eyes with her again, and her lips part briefly in surprise as she inhales slowly.  
“I don’t see you because you hide from me” he says softly. “You are holding my person suit while still wearing yours. The only difference now is the wedding ring I gave you that you keep.”  
Tears come slowly into Bedelia’s eyes as she presses her lips together. “You haven’t looked for me, Hannibal. You have used me as a flashlight into a part of yourself you wish to understand.”  
“I haven’t used you” he says, trying to suppress emotion, his voice slipping in spite of himself. “You have guided me now as you have guided me then. I have been searching for you since you came back to your home that evening in Baltimore.”  
“But you have always looked for Will, too, Hannibal.” She pauses. “You have looked for him while searching for me, but now you have abandoned your search in favor of him.”  
Hannibal says nothing.  
“And I have remained with you as you stepped blindly into the dark.”  
“If Will Graham is the dark, then you were the light, Bedelia.”  
A tear slides down Bedelia’s cheek before she can contain it.  
“Why am I alone in the dark?” he asks quietly. He swallows his tears and turns away, leaving her alone in their bedroom.

~~~~

An hour later Hannibal is lying in their bed, cradling a book. Bedelia comes quietly out of the bathroom, dropping her robe on the chair at her vanity before climbing into bed.   
She lays down beside him and stares vacantly at the ceiling for a few moments before speaking. “Are we the center of our universe, or is Will Graham?”  
Hannibal inhales slowly for a moment before closing his book and looking down at her.   
“If we have formed our universe, then we decide what is at its center.”  
“Have you decided?” she asks him, pointedly. “This is not my decision, Hannibal. I am not the one who led us here.”  
He drops onto his elbow and nestles beside her.   
“No,” he says softly, “but you are here.”   
“Light penetrates even the darkest of corners. Or it tries to.”  
Hannibal moves closer to her and brushes her cheek with his lips. She surprises herself by returning the rare gesture of affection by wrapping her arms around his neck, his skin still holding delicate evidence of soap and aftershave.   
“If Will Graham found you tomorrow, would you remember this?” she asks him softly in his ear.   
“If a man goes blind, he does not forget what it was like to see light.” He pulls back and looks gently into her eyes. “You have always led me, from where I was, to where I am now.” He inhales slowly, tracing her skin with his finger. “And now you must let me go.”  
“And just when you began to see me” she says softly.  
“I am never far, even as I wander. And you, you are the bottle of perfume you left for me in your home that night I came to find you—there for me, even when all else is dark.”  
“You came to kill me.”  
“I thought you abandoned me. That you betrayed me.”  
“I didn’t.”  
“No. You became my wife instead.”  
They regard each other silently for a few moments before Hannibal gently takes her hand and kisses her wedding ring.   
“And in all this time I have been true to you. And you have been my only wife.”  
“When the darkness suffocates you, you will come find me.”  
“I have never done anything else” he says softly.   
They kiss each other goodnight. Bedelia sees their hands holding the universe, and finds that although it is nighttime, there is almost too much light, and nothing is really dark.


End file.
